2 Responses

Hi, Jay. Great column. You may want to note to your readers that the actual appearance or result of these Alt + codes may be dependent on which font the user chooses in the Character Map. For example, ü (Alt + 0252) will appear as a checkmark in Wingdings font. This also provides very useful and creative opportunities in spreadsheeets and documents.

If all you need is the occasional accent mark, Alt-number codes will work. But there are much better ways.

For instance, Word has some built-in accented characters. To get the é charactders, pres Ctrl-Shift-’ (single quote), let go, and press the e character.

However, if you need to work in a western European language using a US keyboard on a regular basis, the best way is probably the U.S. International keyboard layout. It’s free, it’s built into Windows and works in every Windows program. It’s fairly intuitive; unlike the Alt-code method, there’s nothing to memorize. Unlike other layouts, the non-alphanumeric characters (@ # $ + and others) still work the same way. And it doesn’t interfere with typing in English.